With a new Netflix series on the horizon, the Punisher has once again been propelled into the spotlight. As one of Marvel's more controversial characters, old Frank Castle has enjoyed something of a tempestuous history - one chock full of murder, torture, and the odd crossover here and there.
Said history has meant that a whole bunch of misconceptions regarding the character have become commonplace, but even truer is that there are elements of it that, not for lack of trying, Marvel would much rather prefer you'd forget.
This involves everything from the basic fundamentals of the character to some of the straight-up bizarre narrative decisions writers have taken with him over the years. He's crossed over with Archie (yes, that Archie), smacked around the odd animal here and there, and that's before we even get to the guy's inexorable bodycount.
Frank Castle has always been one to cut a divisive figure on the page as much as off it, but those uglier, more closely guarded secrets remain in the shadows...
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
